Siege of Tarr-Hostigos

by John F. Carr

  Brakkos cried, “By Styphon’s privy parts! Priest, you are as weak-spined as our Grand Captain-General! Don’t you see, when Roxthar and his butchers are through with Kalvan, they will next turn on Dralm, then Tranth, then Yirtta Allmother, finally on Galzar himself! Fight before it is too late! We betray our oaths, but not our god!”

  Demmos shook his head. “Uncle Wolf Olmnestes speaks words of truth. Any of you who desert this siege without his permission will be under Galzar’s ban. Captain-General Phidestros has publicly offered us a position in his own Beshtan Army; I for one will take him up on his offer.

  I fear the time of the Free Companies is over. The Fireseed War has changed our lives; we are no longer free.”

  Phidestros, who knew full well when the time to strike was before him, said, “I will guarantee your ranks in the Army of Beshta. In these times, I can also guarantee you plenty of work with your swords, as well.”

  Captain Demmos rose up and touched his heart with his hand. “I and the White Company swear to faithfully serve Prince Phidestros of Beshta, obey his orders and commands. I give my blood oath. It is done, before Galzar and my new commander.”

  Phidestros gave him the ring off his finger, saying, “By this token, I take your oath.”

  The other captains looked at each other nodding their heads. Thymestros came forward to give his oath.

  In a thunderous silence, Brakkos left the tent.

  It was Olmnestes who broke the silence. “Captain Brakkos and his men will be gone before dawn.” The priest intoned in a hushed voice, “By Galzar’s Mace, they are doomed. Yet I fear Brakkos may well be right.”

  III

  Ptosphes looked around him at the battle-strained faces on the keep’s roof. At dawn they would face the twenty-first day of the siege; almost certainly they would face the second storming attempt. The first storming attempt ten days ago had gained the enemy the north tower, but shellfire from the keep had kept them from mounting guns there.

  The first had cost the garrison of Tarr-Hostigos a hundred men, the Styphoni three thousand. Another prisoner raid had yielded them that intelligence. To strike back and take Styphoni prisoners had helped boost sagging morale.

  The second storming would be more dangerous. The enemy would certainly have some tactics devised to meet shells. Those rifles would come into play against the Hostigi marksmen who had butchered the mercenaries’ captains. He would have to order his riflemen to the upper floors where they could fire behind the protection of arrow slits and battlements.

  Worst of all, this time Styphon’s Red Hand would be clutching at Tarr-Hostigos. The Temple Bands had been gathering in Hostigos Town all day. Would they lead the assault, or bring up the rear to remind the vanguard that there was something to be feared more than Hostigi shells?

  Two men carrying Captain-General Harmakros’ chair set it down with a thump. The two men carrying Harmakros himself gently lowered him into the chair, arranged the cushions behind him and stepped back.

  Even in the twilight, Ptosphes could see that Harmakros’ cheeks were too flushed for a man who was supposed to be healing well.

  “Did you have wine at dinner?”

  “Why not, Prince? It will take more wine than we have in Tarr-Hostigos to kill me before Styphon’s House does.”

  Ptosphes sighed. With variations, he’d heard this at least twenty times today, since it had become obvious that the Styphoni were gathering again. No one expected to see tomorrow’s sunset. Nobody appeared to care, either, so long as they could take a proper escort to Galzar’s Great Hall with them. To be sure of doing that, everybody had worked all day as if demons would pounce on them the moment they dropped their tools or even stopped to take a deep breath.

  Ptosphes looked the length of what was, for another night at least, his castle. The work done to protect the mortars showed most clearly. The four small ones now had stones banked around them, so that the shells bursting outside wouldn’t do so much damage. The three larger mortars were back on their field carriages. They could move to prepared positions all over the courtyard as fast as the men on the ropes could pull them, then fire again almost as soon as they stopped.

  The four biggest mortars were still in the pit in the outer courtyard. They were really just an old twelve-pounder and three eight-pounders, with their breeches sunk into the earth and their muzzles raised. They were too heavy to move or mount anywhere else, and in any case they could reach everywhere around Tarr-Hostigos from the inner courtyard. Their crews were finishing a magazine of timbers covered with stones, to protect their shells and fireseed.

  “Prince Ptosphes!” One of the riflemen on sentry duty was pointing toward the siege lines on the west side of the castle. “They’re starting to move around before the light goes. Think they’ll come tonight?” He sounded almost eager.

  Ptosphes stared into the dusk through his farseer, wishing for the hundredth time in the last four years that he had one of the far-seeing glasses of Great King Truman’s army that his son-in-law talked about. They were like Kalvan’s old pistol--the Great King couldn’t even teach his friends how to make the tools to make the tools to make the glasses!

  Yet those skills would be learned. Ermut had made six or seven of the long farseer tubes that brought far away closer. Kalvan had praised Ermut, but truth they were only two or three times better than the naked eye--not like the far-seers Kalvan talked about. Yet, what the gods had taught once, they could teach again--and more easily, because they would be teaching men who were trying to learn and knew what power the new knowledge might give them.

  If Kalvan’s luck continued to hold, his children might live to look at a battlefield through farseers, or even ride into battle aboard one of those armored wagons that moved without horses and carried guns that fired many times while a man was drawing a deep breath.

  Ptosphes put aside thoughts of the future he wouldn’t live to see and looked to where the rifleman was pointing. The man was right. Things that looked vaguely like enormous carts were rolling slowly along behind the trenches. It was too dark to make out more, but they must be heavy. The wheels of the carts looked to be solid wood and as high as a man.

  “Should we try a few ranging shots, just to remind them that we’re awake?” Harmakros asked.

  “Not with the mortars. We want to save their shells.”

  “That little rifled bronze three-pounder on the inner gate, though it might not have the range.”

  “Kalvan said we shouldn’t use case shot with rifled guns,” Ptosphes said. “It damages the rifling. With solid shot, that three-pounder will do more good up here.”

  Harmakros’ face asked what he was too tactful to put into words: ‘how likely is it that any gun in Tarr-Hostigos will last long enough to damage itself, once the Grand Host advances?’ Perhaps he was chafing at having to wait like a bear tethered in a pit, as the dogs circled just of reach.

  The hoisting tackle on the keep easily hauled the three-pounder up to the roof, but not before darkness fell. Half a dozen shots produced a satisfactory outburst of shouts and curses from the Styphoni, but otherwise they seemed to have fallen off the edge of the world. After the half dozen failed to start a fire, Ptosphes ordered the gun to cease.

  He made a final inspection, counting with special care the torches and tarpots laid ready, in case the Styphoni came at night. It wasn’t likely; the chance of hitting friends in a night attack would not please the mercenary captains. It wasn’t impossible either, and Ptosphes was determined to follow Kalvan’s teachings to the end (not far away now): prepare for everything that isn’t impossible.

  At last Ptosphes returned to the Great Hall, to find Harmakros asleep in the chair of state and snoring like volley fire from a company of musketeers. Ptosphes rolled himself in his cloak without taking off his armor, on a pallet as far from Harmakros as he could find.

  He’d thought he might be too tired or uneasy to sleep, but instead he drifted off into oblivion almost as soon as he stretched out his
legs and lowered his head onto the dirt-stiffened cloth.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Phidestros brushed the sleep out of his eyes and stared through the valley’s early-morning shadows at the Grand Host’s encampment. A splendid sight with its thousands of campfires--until one remembered that all these tens of thousands of men were chained to this desolate valley by a castle held by three or four hundred old men and walking wounded. Meanwhile, the Usurper Kalvan fled into the wilderness.

  As it was, he was chief over the Grand Host only in name. In truth, he was first among equals, all of them hamstrung by Archpriest Roxthar--including Great King Lysandros who was in debt to Styphon’s House up to his eyebrows. The Investigator was utterly convinced that the root of Kalvan’s heresy was to be found in the Princedom of Hostigos and equally determined to extricate it if he had to Investigate every man, woman and child still remaining in the Princedom. Roxthar would not allow any stone to be left unturned, including that mother-of-all-stones, Tarr-Hostigos. Against that particular stone the Grand Host had bruised its foot for the best part of a moon, while Kalvan’s real army slipped away. But, with Galzar’s blessing, today that was about to change!

  A small forest of poles already held the bodies of about a fifth of Hostigos Town’s townspeople, those who had failed the Investigation. Add to that number those who fled with Kalvan, and by spring there would hardly be enough Hostigi left to bury their dead.

  If the Investigation came to his lands again, Phidestros resolved it would not be his new subjects who decorated the gallows. He doubted the Investigators would do as well with their hot irons and boning knives against soldiers as they did against women and children. It might cost his own head to take Roxthar’s, but at least he would have the pleasure of harvesting the madman’s first!

  The shadows began to fade. From his vantage point, Phidestros saw the camps coming to life, like kicked anthills. He’d wanted to lead the Iron Band in the first assault himself, but Soton insisted that Phidestros keep himself safely in the rear. Captain-Generals, Soton stated emphatically, were not meant to be fired off like Kalvan’s rockets.

  Soton was right, of course. Had Phidestros been in the vanguard during the first storming attempt, he might be dead along with so many others from Ptosphes’ exploding cannonballs.

  It still rankled, though, to be leading from behind. One more thing he would have to get used to, he supposed, along with asking who had married whom before he swore unquestioning obedience. Great King Lysandros’ support was reluctant because the Great King owed his throne to Styphon’s House and knew that Roxthar and the Inner Circle had to be placated before he could allow his commanders to do their jobs. At least Lysandros had shown the good judgment to forestall Galzar’s Ban and ride to Hostigos Town to recast the Grand Host in such a manner than when the Ban was made public it would have already lost much of its force.

  Phidestros cupped his hands around his pipe bowl and used the tinder-box to get a spark. When the pipe was drawing, he blew out a long plume of smoke, watching the rising morning breeze chase it away.

  “Please, Captain-General,” Geblon said. “Would you get down? Otherwise the Hostigi will aim at your smoke.”

  Phidestros doubted that in this breeze even a Hostigi rifleman could hit a man at this distance, but obeyed anyway. He could see as well, and make Geblon happy to boot.

  The guns newly emplaced in the battery at the foot of the draw thumped. Their shots tore masonry from a gate tower. Another salvo followed, and white smoke rose in place of the morning mist.

  Phidestros puffed on his pipe and prayed to all the true gods that today the butcher’s bill would be a light one.

  II

  Kalvan watched as Xykos, Captain of Rylla’s Beefeaters--in polished silver dinner plate yet--opened the tent flap so that he could enter the makeshift Council Hall. Rylla walked beside him, her face set like stone, careful not to accidentally brush up against her husband. She had been frozen like this ever since she had been unable to talk Prince Ptosphes out of leaving Tarr-Hostigos. Possibly she blamed herself for this, or her father--or him.

  With all that was going on in the exodus from Hostigos, Kalvan had neither the time nor the patience to draw it out of her. Rylla was too proud to talk about her problems without a struggle. A fight between the Great King and his Queen, with no privacy and things so uncertain, would be bad for army morale. Still, he should be doing something, but what? Nothing coming to mind, he squeezed her arm affectionately. That she didn’t shake his hand loose he took as a good sign.

  All the surviving Princes of what was once the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos, and most of the generals, were seated upon barrels, boxes and chests facing the Fireseed Throne, which had been shipped out of Tarr-Hostigos by wagon at no small cost in space. Kalvan knew that it had displaced a load of foodstuffs, but symbols were as important as food--maybe in cases like this, more important. His people needed a visible reminder that their homeland was not forgotten and that their migration was temporary--not permanent.

  Kalvan grimaced in pain as he limped over to his ad hoc throne with the aid of a panther-headed cane. His wound was no longer inflamed, but it still ached. Willow bark tea made the pain endurable.

  No longer Great King Kalvan of Hos-Hostigos, but Great King in exile. Great King of all the land his army occupied and overlord to only those he surveyed in their encampments and inside this faux council hall: Prince Pheblon, formerly of Nostor, head swathed in bandages courtesy of an ax blade; Prince Sarrask, late of Sask, looking disgustingly hale and hearty; Prince Tythanes of Kyblos, who looked as if he didn’t know who or where he was; and Prince Kestophes of Ulthor, whose face showed he knew his reign in Ulthor was coming to a end. Prince Phrames of Beshta, his face still pale, was leaning on a cane of his own.

  Well, no matter how disgruntled the assembled Princes were they were better off than the rest; Prince Balthames of Sashta was no longer of this world, courtesy of a bullet to the head--payment for his treachery, Prince Armanes of Nyklos had died in his saddle at Ardros Field from a halberd blow and Prince Ptosphes, still--he hoped--holding Tarr-Hostigos, would soon join the ranks of heroes in Galzar’s Great Hall. Certainly without Ptosphes and Harmakros’ valiant stand at Tarr-Hostigos they would not be here today.

  After Kalvan sat down, Chancellor Chartiphon opened the meeting with the traditional ceremonial remarks and flourishes; in times of trouble these rituals and customs were more important than when times were good. “All ye rise, Great King Kalvan will now speak!”

  Kalvan rose to his feet, paused to light his pipe and then said, “Now to business. As you all know the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos has been displaced along with Our person. As far as We can determine, Styphon’s armies occupy the Princedoms of Beshta, Sashta, Sask and Hostigos. Nostor’s days are numbered. Nyklos’ too, once Phidestros clears the Gap. However, it will take time to conquer and occupy those Princedoms--” He paused to look over at Rylla, who was sitting rigidly on her Throne. “Time we have, thanks to First Prince Ptosphes’ noble sacrifice. Let us all Praise Allfather Dralm.”

  There were murmurs of “Praise Dralm and Ptosphes.” All the assembled bowed their heads in silent prayer after Kalvan’s example. He felt like the worst sort of hypocrite, but it was the least he could do for the man who had treated him as a son, rather than son-in-law, and given the ultimate gift of his life to his people--time.

  “As Great King in exile and no longer being able to offer the protection We have sworn to give, We will release Prince Kestophes of Ulthor and Prince Tythanes of Kyblos from homage. They are free to return to their lands with any and all sworn subjects who wish to return with them.”

  Despite everyone else’s shock, Kalvan hoped they took him up on his offer. He already had more mouths than he could feed as well as more soldiers than any sane ally would welcome.

  Prince Tythanes’ look of relief was so genuine and heartfelt, he looked as if he were about to break out in tears. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I w
ithdraw any and all oaths to Your Majesty and the Throne of Hos-Hostigos.” He continued on in this vein for almost ten minutes with a litany of praise regarding his former King and fellow Princes.

  “Now I and my command will return to Kyblos and await each candle until Your Majesty returns to his rightful place on the Fireseed Throne of Hos-Hostigos. Upon that moment I shall pay my homage, thus I swear.”

  “I shall remember your loyalty and wish you Dralm’s grace,” Kalvan intoned. “You may leave now.” As Tythanes and his entourage left the big tent Kalvan thought, the Prince might miss Styphon’s noose this time, but it would yank him out of his saddle the following year. He was doing Tythanes no favor: a fact not missed by Prince Kestophes, who muttered under his breath yet loud enough that Kalvan could hear, “Styphon’s own fool!”

  Kalvan asked if Kestophes wanted to withdraw his fealty.

  Kestophes long face twisted into a sneer. “Sorry, Your Majesty, but I have no desire to suffer Roxthar’s rack.”

  “Then you wish to join Us in exile?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I believe my rightful place is at the side of my King.”

  “Then it is settled. Chancellor Chartiphon, will you give Us a report on the status of the subjects of Hos-Hostigos.”

  Chartiphon, his formerly silver hair turned white, rose to his feet. While still fleshed out, Chartiphon carried himself like an old man. Leaving his home and friends to die had taken most of the starch out of his step. Kalvan was glad he’d taken the initiative to remove him as Captain-General last year. It suddenly hit him full force just how alone he was without Ptosphes, Harmakros and Verkan. Damn Styphon’s House all to Hell! What am I going to do without them?

  “Your Majesty, I have attempted to make an accurate census of the refugees, but it has proven impossible. New parties join us every day, while others drift away or leave for Hos-Agrys or Hos-Zygros. Some return to be counted again.” Chartiphon shook his head.